Internet taking root in India

BY Ranjan Srivastava| IN Digital Media | 06/07/2006

Ranjan Srivastava

Chief of Bureau, Prabhat Khabar

?         Indian languages, small towns and broadband getting prominance.

?         Internet is making deep inroads in lives of Indian people.

?         Internet is spreading horizontally and vertically.

?         Class, Language and regional bars being eliminated.

Internet is taking root in India, says the just released India Online 2006 report*. Prepared by Juxt Consult, a Delhi based online research agency, the report indicates a horizontal and vertical boom in Internet usage in India. Growth in Internet usage is noticeable in both ¿spread¿ and ¿depth¿. Report notices a 22% growth in number of Internet users in last one year. Around 20% new users are added, who are using net for last than one year.

Some conclusions of the report are very interesting and overwhelming. Proportion of non-metro users is now at 50%, while 60% users are from Sec B and C.   

Only 60% users have English as their preferred language. Rest prefer India language websites. 42% visit Indian language websites.

Hindi is the most preferred language for reading after English. 18% prefer Hindi, 4% Malyalam, 3% each Marathi, Telugu and Tamil, 2% each Bengali and Kannada, and 1% each Gujarati and Punjabi. 17% users visit Hindi websites, 5% Tamil, 4% each Malyalam and Telugu, 3% Marathi, 2% each Kannada and Bengali, and 1% each Punjabi and Gujrati.

Only 50% users come from metros, 22% come from Urban uptowns, 15% from emerging towns and 13% from other towns.

The proportion of women net users is now has increased from 15% to 26%. Office is the most preferred place for net surfing, but cyber cafe and home is catching very fast. 53% users surf net from their offices, while 46% from cyber cafe and 40% from their home.

This Internet boom can also be called a broadband boom. As was expected, broadband has pushed dial-up to margins. This has happened due to low prices offered by service providers in last one year. Now 52% users accessing from home use a broadband connection. Only 27% home and 13% office connections are dial-up.

The report confirms that Internet has made inroads into Indian life. As many as 88% of  office based and 75% of home based users use the Internet daily, 26%  home based users use the Net for 2 hours daily. And 88% net users regularly surf or check out blogs. 55% participate in online contests. The report says that more than 80% net users surf internet daily.

The report also suggests that the Internet is increasingly becoming a tool of entertainment for Indians. Importance of Internet as a work tool is increasing, but so increasing is its role in ordinary Indian¿s life. 48% users download and listen music through Internet. 36% use it for product search. 35% each use it for sports, games. 33% each for astrology, picture sharing, health and life-style. 28% use it for downloading mobile ringtones. 27% for dating/friendship, 25% for cinema, 23% for net banking, 22% for booking train tickets, 19% for seminar/workshop info, 17% for travel info, 15% for finance info, 15% each for marketing and matrimony, 14% each for paying bills, business travel info, booking air tickets, stock trading, 11% each for adult content, real state info, 10% for net telephony and 8% for booking hotels.

Emailing, checking blogs, e-greetings, job search, news & events, learning materials, work related info search, chatting, downloading screensavers/wallpapers and music are ten top activities on the net. Surprisingly, checking blogs has become second most preferred online activity after e-mailing. This clearly confirms that internet is making fast inroads in life of ordinary Indians.

The Internet has proved its importance, and its usage has crossed the boundaries of region and class. 51% Indian users come from low-middle class with less than 10k monthly income. 24% come from 10-20k group, 10% come from 20-30K group and only 15% users are of more than 30K group. 74% users have no credit cards. Having a computer is no more a condition for net usage. Only 49% net users have their own PC/laptop.

The India online 2006 report confirms that the internet revolution is happening in India. It is changing the lives of ordinary Indians in a way that no other medium has ever changed. It is spreading both horizontally and vertically. The report clearly suggests a Internet boom in India. Businesses and governments should wake up to this situation.

*This report is based on a land survey conducted in April 2006.  This survey covered 21 cities of various size across 4 regions of India. 5000 households were asked. Later 20,000 respondents were surveyed online in May 2006. To ensure good representation, an online survey was conducted across 4 leading India email portals - Rediff, MSN, Indiatimes and Yahoo, and Google search.